Like the most of us I made the decision to a homelab. Some years ago I started with one HP Microserver N40L and over the last years this setup evolves to the current state.

My homelab approach was to have an environment where I can test the most of the things I´m doing every day regardless of the performance. So I deciced to have small systems that can handle VMware ESXi and vSAN.

MGMT Server

This is my management ESXi which runs the VCSA 6.5 and vSAN witness appliance.

Intel NUC NUC5i3RYH

Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-5010U CPU @ 2.10GHz

16 GB RAM

16 GB SanDisk Cruzer Fit (boot device)

1 TB SanDisk X400 SSD

1 GB NIC (MGMT & VMs)

vSAN 2 Node ROBO All Flash Cluster

This is my 2 Node vSAN Cluster it consists of 2 Apple Mac Minis. Because they only can handle two SSDs when you use a data doubler kit I have to use an USB stick to boot from. I really what to have an AF vSAN so I choose to get an enterprise SSD as chaching device and a good consumer SSD for capacity.

Apple Mac Mini 6.2

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3720QM CPU @ 2.60GHz

16 GB RAM

16 GB SanDisk Cruzer Fit (boot device)

200 GB Intel DC S3700 SSD (vSAN Cache device)

1 TB SanDisk X400 SSD (vSAN Capacity device)

1 GB NIC (MGMT & VMs)

1 GB Thunderbolt Adapter (vSAN dircet attached)

Apple Mac Mini 5.2

Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2520M CPU @ 2.50GHz

16 GB RAM

16 GB SanDisk Cruzer Fit (boot device)

200 GB Intel DC S3700 SSD (vSAN Cache device)

1 TB SanDisk X400 SSD (vSAN Capacity device)

1 GB NIC (MGMT & VMs)

1 GB Thunderbolt Adapter (vSAN dircet attached)

Backup Server

For testing different backup solutions I have one dedicaded system.

Asrock C2550D4I

Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU C2550 @ 2.41GHz

16 GB RAM

16 GB SanDisk Cruzer Fit (boot device)

128 GB Samsung 840 Evo

1 TB HDD

2 x 1 GB NIC (MGMT & VMs)

Now my homelab are 4 small systems that allow me to install, administrate and troubleshot the most scenarios I will need for me daily business. The performance is absolutly no problem, but sometimes I wish I had a little bit more ressources (RAM or CPU) to run more or extrem big VMs. But like you all may know this is not the end it´s just a snapshot, a homelab is never finished and it will always evolve. So it will improve over the next months and years 🙂